Dune: Awakening, Steam Deck Verified, However Unplayable

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Dune: Awakening generally is a fairly powerful sport to run, and at launch, it was fairly tough on the Steam Deck. Simply pottering round your base or doing the beginning quests was simply effective, however the second you bought to bigger bases with pentashields, the Steam Deck’s GPU simply could not deal with the stress anymore, as we highlighted in our overview. However just lately, the sport has obtained a “Verified” score by Valve, so has the scenario improved? Let’s have a look.

The brief reply is sure, it has maybe improved in some areas, and we will preserve 30 FPS in quieter areas of the sport and most interiors. The lengthy reply isn’t any, whereas Dune: Awakening has seen some slight enhancements in efficiency, the sport nonetheless suffers slowdowns to some extent the place the sport is unplayable, and even the areas which might be 30 FPS aren’t precisely clean both.

I’d hazard a guess that Valve is solely taking part in the early parts of the sport and slapping a “Verified” badge on right here, with out truly attending to Dune’s endgame, the place it is at its most intense so far as system sources go.

I’ve a pretty big base, subsequent to 2 different giant bases, and on this space, you’ll be able to count on frequent drops under 20 FPS on the Steam Deck, in addition to frequent stutters, probably because of the VRAM utilization exceeding 4GB, leading to a really unplayable expertise. Dune: Awakening’s fight is basically primarily based round timing, and also you completely are not looking for an unstable framerate or stuttering to be a part of the method. I would not even do PvE with how it’s proper now, not to mention PvP, which is the whole focus of Dune’s endgame.

As you’ll be able to see from the frametime graph within the screenshots the place I’m in fight, though the sport is basically sticking to 30 FPS, it is nonetheless an erratic graph, leading to some stuttering and inconsistency, which is not preferrred.

To not point out that the sport requires us to run in “Extremely Efficiency” or “Efficiency” upscaling presets, which means the picture high quality is fairly dangerous, too.

It’s a disgrace, I used to be really hoping that Funcom had managed to get Dune: Awakening working properly on the Steam Deck, however that looks like it is a far cry from taking place. I personally would hesitate to even give the sport the “Playable” score for Steam Deck proper now, Unsupported might properly be the right score if the whole sport is meant to be playable.

Should you solely use your Steam Deck to play video games, then please don’t purchase Dune: Awakening to play in your Steam Deck. It is an ideal sport, and I’ve logged over 70 hours in it myself, however it simply is not a very good time on our little handheld.

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